mdolla: 5 Hacks for Your Next Room Repainting Project

Room repainting can be tricky and time-consuming. And if you choose to go the DIY route, you want to make sure you’re doing it right. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know much about painting, which leads to shoddy jobs and bitter, last-ditch phone calls to professional painters.

The thing is that anyone can paint, but you have to know what you’re doing. There’s much more to it than pouring paint into a tray, wetting your roller, and painting away. With that in mind, here are a few hacks you can use to produce a beautiful finished project.

1. Put Color Samples on Different Walls

The hardest thing about painting a room is choosing the right color. Those little paint chips you get in the store are so small that it’s often difficult to get a good idea of what it will look like. Even painting a 12-inch by 12-inch sample on the wall doesn’t always tell you what you need to know. So, you may want to take things a step further.

“We always put at least a few paint color samples up on all four walls before making the final choice,” designer Krista Nye Nicholas says. “Lighting is everything with paint selection, and hues will vary greatly throughout the day. You won’t regret taking the time to do this!”

2. Take Time to Prepare for Room Repainting

The prep work makes all the difference. While a professional painter can come in and paint a room without doing any taping, you don’t have that sort of accuracy. You should be spending as much time preparing a room as painting it.

Good preparation includes taping joints between walls and ceilings/floors, covering up crown molding, putting plastic wrap or a drop cloth over the floor, and opening up windows to let paint fumes escape.

3. Remove All Dust

If you’ve ever painted a dusty wall, it’s a mistake you won’t make twice. The dust gets caught in the paint and you wind up with an unwanted texture upon drying.

That’s why experts suggest removing dust from walls with a Swiffer duster prior to starting. Depending on the size of the room, this should only take an extra five or ten minutes. It’s definitely time well spent.

4. Put Vanilla in the Paint Bucket

Not a fan of that strong paint smell? Add some Vanilla extract!

Mask some of the smell by adding a few drops of vanilla extract to each paint bucket. According to Reference.com, a ratio of one tablespoon of extract to one gallon of latex paint works best.

5. Use Tinfoil in Paint Tray

A good quality paint tray (not the plastic kind that bends in half when you lift them off the ground) isn’t the cheapest item in the world. Purchasing one or two is fine, but you don’t want to have to buy a dozen of them to complete a big painting job. Unfortunately, this is what ends up happening when people let the paint dry in them overnight.

The key to keeping paint trays in operable condition – even after the paint has sat overnight – is to cover them with tinfoil or plastic wrap. Then, when you’re done with a painting session, simply remove the covering and your paint tray is still useable.

Save Your Money and Do it Yourself

Room repainting can be quite expensive if you hire a professional, but it can also end up looking pretty rough if you decide to do it on your own without following the correct steps. Save your money by doing it yourself – but make sure you follow these hacks to get the best results.

Featured photo credit: Pixabay.com via pixabay.com

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